FORTY-ONE

 

She might be padded in so many layers, the cold air would never get through, but still she could feel every muscle along Tor's torso, hard against her back. Toasty warm, too, not like stone at all. And when he flew...she felt so secure in his arms, her only thought of the drop below was how beautiful it looked from up here.

Gargoyle magic, she decided. It had to be. For gargoyles to exist implied the existence of magic, and while she'd never believed in any of that stuff before, it was hard to deny that she was flying through the air in the arms of the most gorgeous gargoyle she'd ever seen.

Callie would never have called gargoyles ugly if she'd met Tor.

They landed in a patch of darkness outside the walls, where frosty grass crunched underfoot.

Tor stared at the wall for a moment, before he burst out laughing. He doubled over, slapping his thigh, until he rolled on the grass, still roaring with laughter.

"What is it?" She couldn't spy anything even remotely funny. Certainly nothing to warrant rolling on the ground, laughing her arse off.

"They built buttresses! Bloody buttresses! By God, I wish I'd been here to see it. I told them the walls would fall down unless they built buttresses. Did they? Tell me, did their walls fall down, like I told them they would?"

"Anemone said they fell down only a year after they were built," Catena admitted.

This only made Tor laugh harder, slapping the ground so hard he left handprints in the sodden soil.

Without warning, he leaped to his feet. "Did they build them on the south wall, too? I have to see." He was half a metre in the air, flapping hard, before Catena could blink.

"Wait! You can't just leave me alone out here!" she cried, reaching up.

Tor grinned, leaned forward, then dived. He caught her around the waist before shooting up into the air, clearing the wall with its rusting razor wire and heading across the prison yard.

This was the part of the prison Catena couldn't bear. She squeezed her eyes shut, but still she saw the whipping post she'd hated, every school excursion to this horrible place. Anemone had told her it wasn't even the real one, soaked in the blood of so many prisoners, which was kept in a climate controlled room with the most delicate items in the museum collection. Convict clothes, whips, manacles, and a noose kept coiled in readiness for the gallows.

The rumble of Tor's laughter made her open her eyes again. They hovered near the top of the south wall, where she could see Fremantle spread out below, all the way to the night-dark sea.

"More buttresses?" she guessed.

"Yes! Look at them all! And covered in my mark, as though pretending it was my work would be enough to keep them standing! Fools!" He reached out and traced what looked like a six-petalled flower in a circle. "Here, and here, and over here, too!"

Even Catena could see what Anemone had meant. The wall and buttresses bore the same mark, every few metres. The marks were angled such that they would only be visible to someone working at heights, for they would be invisible from the ground.

Hidden marks, just like the shoes. They were everywhere. A city built on secret witchcraft, right in plain view. Someone should study this, and bring the hidden history to light so more people knew about it.

It was like the graffiti in Pompeii, innocent chalk markings on a wall, preserved for two millennia to tell the eruption's true date, and not the false one recorded in some old scholar's memoirs, many years afterward. Pliny, if she recalled correctly.

She wondered what other secrets this place hid. The prison, and all the other buildings convicts had built in Perth and Fremantle.

Maybe Tor would know.

"If this is your mark, but you didn't put it here...where can I see the real thing?" she asked.

"The Gatehouse. A proper gatehouse, this one is, like I'd build to guard the lower reaches of a castle. The angles must be perfect for ornate work like this one, which is why you must have a cut circle to compare it to." Tor flapped his wings – once, twice – and cleared the wall, setting them down on the road in front of the prison entrance. "There. Carved by my own hand, that was."

Catena could see the difference. Unlike the scratched marks on the wall, this one had been carved deep by someone with a steady, sure hand. This mark was not meant to be a secret, it was a signature.

"What does it mean?" she asked, running her fingers over it. It beggared belief that she could be standing here, speaking to the man who'd carved it almost two centuries earlier, but this was the sort of thing she'd dreamed about as a child. It was like finding out time travel really was possible.

"It means I made it. That it will stand strong against any storm. That it will not fall down around the occupants' ears because of shoddy work. It's not some plea for protection, scratching a magic rune to call the spirits down to hold the wall up, for the stones themselves are not up to the job. It says I made this, and it will stand."

Catena's mouth dropped open. Tor seemed to stand taller, his shoulders broader than they were before. Or maybe it was in the tilt of his head...he looked proud of his work, and so he should be, if his creations stood the test of time while the convict-built ones behind them blew over in the first storm.

What had it taken to break a man with such towering strength? She shuddered at the thought. Something terrible. Only something heart-breakingly awful could have shattered his hard-as-stone spirit, to make him bow his head so deeply he hadn't dared rise again until now.

Now, he was himself again, or almost.

This man's purpose was not to serve, though every inch of him screamed that he could and would protect.

Catena's mouth was dryer than the stones behind her. The Tor before her was everything she could have dreamed of in a man. A man who was more than she could ever hope for.

"Tor? What will I tell Anemone? When she asks me if you can fix the walls?"

She suspected she already knew what his answer would be, but she wanted to hear it from him.

"The only way to fix those crumbling walls is to tear them down and build them anew. Or let them fall into ruin, as they so clearly wish to do. Or, I could do as I have in your house, and painstakingly patch them, so they might stand for another century, but certainly no longer." He scrutinised her. "Are you cold, and impatient to return home? Have you seen enough of crumbling stonework, and silly superstition?"

Actually, she wanted to see more of it, for the seed of an idea was growing in the back of her mind, though she had yet to voice it. All in good time.

"I'm not cold, but I think we are done here. If you're ready to fly home, I'm happy to fly with you." Any time.

As Tor scooped her up and rose into the air, she wished they could fly everywhere together.

Then again, that would probably have the internet afire with videos of them, and one Moth Man video was more than enough.

She peered at the streets below them, searching for anyone with a camera pointed upward, but it was close to midnight on a weeknight, so no one was out to ruin her night.

So she just rested her head against Tor's broad chest, and enjoyed the ride.